SCHOOLS IN COMPUTER CRUNCH

Joseph Sjostrom, Tribune Staff WriterCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Maine Township's three high schools are preparing to bring computers to virtually every classroom and every subject area within four years.

The cost, if the school board approves, will be about $4.7 million over four years. That figure is certain to startle anyone who was educated in the era when microscopes were the zenith of classroom technology.

"As you look across American public schools, students are being educated to this level of technology elsewhere. We do not want to be avant-garde. But we want to improve the basic standard of instructional materials and resources available to our students," said Steven Snider, superintendent of Maine Township District 207, which oversees Maine East and Maine South, in Park Ridge, and Maine West in Des Plaines. Together, the schools have about 6,100 students.

Though the plan is expensive, there's really no other choice, educators said. The issue isn't whether to buy computers, but how much equipment a school can afford and use wisely. Officials, hamstrung by the property-tax cap in Cook County, must weigh district finances as well as concerns about obsolescence of any equipment they purchase.

And as they make these important decisions, Illinois school districts find themselves largely on their own. The State Board of Education expects to spend $194 million to help school districts update their technology between now and 2000. But the state's focus is mostly on the big picture: helping schools define educational goals.

"There are some rules of thumb: a computer for every six students, and wiring for the Internet. But we encourage schools to look first at where they want students to be when they graduate," said Cheryl Lemke, the state board's associate superintendent for learning technologies.

A draft of District 207's plan was presented to the school board earlier this month by James Flanagan, who oversees the district's computer needs, and Suzanne Millies, assistant superintendent for instruction.

The plan proposes about $4.7 million in spending on hardware, software and wiring over the next four years. It also recommends an increase in the number of computers from about 375 now (there are 275 more obsolete ones) to about 1,000 by the year 2000; wiring to link the computers with each other and with the Internet; and a myriad of details such as software, anti-viral programs and training.

A committee, headed by school board member Donna Pellar, is refining the plan and is expected to produce a final recommendation in May. If the plan is approved, students could be using the new computers by the start of next school year.

The district now mostly uses computers for writing and editing classes. Maine Township schools also make extensive use of "distance learning" equipment, in which some classrooms are wired with voice and video links to classrooms in other schools, including Northeastern Illinois University and Oakton Community College.

"We can send courses from one high school to another. Our students can take Japanese, for credit, at Oakton while sitting in a District 207 classroom," Millies said.

Recommendations for new technology in the draft plan include buying:

- Computer-aided design hardware and software for drafting classes, at a cost of $164,000.

"All of the real work in architectural and drafting offices today is done by CAD programs," Flanagan said. "A kids who draws a house by hand will be very resistant to change because revisions take so much extra work. But on a CAD program, revisions are very simple."

Students will still learn manual drafting as a basis for computer-aided designing, he said.

- Computers, software and probes that link measurement devices directly to a computer, at a cost of $498,000. Measurements from experiments in motion, energy, temperature and light would be fed directly to the computer.

- Projection devices that take text, graphs or images from a computer screen and put them into a familiar overhead projector for display on a classroom wall, at a cost of $144,000. Teachers would use the projectors to display graphs and other mathematical procedures as the computer generates them, or to display historical and artistic images from a CD or from the Internet.

- Connections to link computers with classrooms, libraries and the Internet, at a cost of $571,000.

- Other new computers and upgrades of obsolete ones. Cost: About $1.9 million.

District 207 looked to several other school districts for guidance, including Glenview grade schools, where Flanagan formerly worked, and Stevenson High School, in Lincolnshire.

Maine Township officials don't expect to buy as much equipment as Stevenson has. But both schools expect about the same things of their technology and their teachers.

"The overall plan is that every kid who graduates from Stevenson High School will be comfortable using technology as a tool in learning," said Stevenson Supt. Richard DeFour.

His school board set a unique condition for its own multimillion dollar investment in computer technology: a commitment in the teachers' union contract that the faculty would become proficient in computer skills such as e-mail, Internet access and spreadsheets.